This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
Important | Majority | Opposition | Public |
The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
The fact that the majority of a community dislikes an opinion gives it no right to interfere with those who hold it. And the fact that the majority of a community wishes not to know certain facts gives it no right to imprison those who wish to know them.
The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
Heart | Mind | Principles |
It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!
Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority have established this.
Majority | Mediocrity | Nothing |
As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.
Good | Harmony | Heart | Impulse | Man | Phenomena | Principles |
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
Men | Principles | War |
Music illustrates the primordial forces of nature, while li reflects the products of creation. Heaven represents the principle of eternal motion, while Earth represents the principle of remaining still, and these two principles of motion and rest permeate life between Heaven and Earth.
Earth | Eternal | Heaven | Life | Life | Music | Nature | Principles | Rest |
A man can enlarge his principles; his principles do not enlarge a man.
Man | Principles |
He who merely knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them.
Principles | Right |
One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: "Have no anxiety about the morrow"; or the words of Sir William Osler; "Live in day-tight compartments.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Day | Happy | Life | Life | Majority | People | Present | Troubles | Words |
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
People | Principles |
The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.
Day | Future | Immortality | Present | Principles |
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
The fate of America cannot depend on any one man. The greatness of American is grounded in principles and not on any single personality.
Fate | Greatness | Man | Personality | Principles | Fate |
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved. As a rule the majority are wrong, the minority is usually right.